


Trick or Treat

by incognitajones



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ficlet Collection, Multi, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Prompt Fill, archived here for the sake of completeness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-10-03 03:59:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 35
Words: 18,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17276666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incognitajones/pseuds/incognitajones
Summary: A personal archive for all of the little scraps of narrative that haven’t previously been posted anywhere other than my Tumblr. The majority areRogue One- orStar Wars-based, but a few other canons show up too.The rating and characters or pairing (if applicable) for each chapter are listed in its title. The original prompt and any content warnings for violence, etc are noted at the beginning.





	1. T, Rey/Kylo Ren, scar appreciation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **briarlily** said: scar appreciation between Rey and Kylo

Klaxons shrieked louder than the robotically calm voice telling all crew to report to designated evacuation points. Sparks showering from cracked conduits left black afterimages like falling ashes in Rey’s vision. The cool bright lighting flickered, cut out, blazed up so brightly it hurt her eyes, and cut out again, replaced by the orange glow of emergency lighting strips in the floor.

When outside forces intervened in one of their duels, she and Kylo Ren usually decided to let it end in a stalemate. He had already put up his lightsaber and so had Rey. But this time, she didn’t flee in the opposite direction to search for a way off this damaged ship. She stalked toward Kylo, herding him steadily into a dead end corridor.

“What are you doing?”

Kylo retreated as Rey moved forward, backing away from her a step at a time until his shoulders hit the metal bulkhead. Rey kept moving forward until her legs brushed his and she had to crane her neck to look him in the eye. 

She raised her left hand and let it hover millimetres away from his face, so close that her skin felt the heat from his, the phantom brush of fine hairs rising in tension.

Kylo squeezed his eyes shut and Rey laid the tips of her fingers on the trench she’d carved across his face. Barely touching the puckered skin, she traced the line down from his brow to his jaw. The changes in texture fascinated her. The centre of the scar was as smooth as the rest of his cheek; only the edges were rougher, bumpy against her fingertip. 

She’d done that with the saber that still hung at her belt. And Kylo hadn’t erased it with bacta or surgery; he’d left her mark plain to see on him. She wondered why: as a spur to vengeance? Or a reminder of his misguided tenet that pain was the best source of power?

He exhaled harshly, hot against her wrist, and Rey pulled her hand away guiltily. 

“You don’t have to stop.” He opened his eyes and looked down at her. From this angle, the heavy line of his lashes made his amber eyes seem darker, or maybe it was the dim lighting. 

She took his huge gloved hand in hers and lifted it to her right shoulder, where the muscle had long ago been sliced by the jagged edge of a hole in a downed freighter. The scar cut across the strip of bare skin between her tunic and her arm wrappings. He rubbed his thumb across the raised, irregular flesh; his touch was surprisingly delicate, the leather cool.

Rey drew in a shaking breath. “You’ll never mark me like that,” she said, looking at him unblinkingly. “You’re never going to hurt Finn again, either.”

He didn’t answer, just stared down at her.

She spun on her heel and ran. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [original note, May 2017] I’ve seen the trailer and I doooon’t caaaare; until TLJ comes out I’m going to continue imagining Kylo with a honking big scar. Rey should get to see her handiwork. Also, some lines may sound familiar because I was riffing off of a somewhat similar scene from a WIP.


	2. G, Cassian & Jyn, seasickness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **thezelbinion** prompted: First sentence: “It's not that she thought the mission would be easy but she definitely thought it would involve fewer trips to the 'fresher.”

It’s not that she thought the mission would be easy, but she definitely thought it would involve fewer trips to the ‘fresher.

Jyn doesn’t understand why her guts are so jumpy—she can swim, she’s spent more time on spaceships than off them in her life, why is the motion of a boat on liquid water any different—and then it lurches sideways, leaving her stomach behind, and she leaps for the tiny cubicle again.

Cassian isn’t nearly as bad off as she is, and he didn’t grow up on an ocean world. How unfair is that? she moans to herself, before he drops a poncho over her head and pushes her up the companionway ladder.

The wind slaps her in the face with hard pellets of rain as soon as her head shows above the deck, but the cold air is aggressively brisk and keeping her eyes on the dim grey line of the horizon (even if it’s moving too much) helps her body regain the sense of where it is in relation to the universe.

Cassian leans beside her on the rail, wet hair pasted to his forehead, and promises, “It’ll get better.”


	3. E, Eowyn/Faramir, alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ohbeeone said: i think faramir/eowyn ALWAYS needs a lil more fic

It is rare for the Prince and Princess of Ithilien to be alone. Their duties demand time spent in the company of others: farmers, foresters, soldiers, servants… the only entirely private moments they can ever be sure of are in the small dominion of their bed. And while those moments in the dark are achingly sweet, on occasion Faramir wishes there were time for them in the daylight.

As he does now. They’ve just returned from riding out to inspect the harvest in the closer farmsteads and the painstakingly restored orchards. Like any self-respecting Rohirrim woman, Eowyn rides in a divided skirt (she prefers breeches, but makes allowance for the prejudices of his people). As she dismounts from her grey mare, he can’t look away from the way the easy, light motion sets her braids swinging down her back and reveals the roundness of her seat.

She sees him watching and her smile widens. The groom hastening to meet them takes the reins of both their mounts to walk them cool and is dismissed with a word of thanks.

Eowyn takes his hand and pulls him into an empty stall.

Her fingers are at his laces, her strong, calloused grip firm around his cock before he understands what she’s about. His head falls back against the wood with a thud as she takes him in hand and draws her fist up, a little rough, just this side of painful.

“Eowyn!” he gasps. “The grooms—the horses will startle—” But he’s already rising to fill her grasp.

Her pale eyes are shining bright and hot. Behind the composure of the Princess, the wild shieldmaiden he loves too is there still, as bold as ever. She presses her strong thighs into his, backing him against the wall with her weight. “Not if you’re quiet, my lord.”

The pleased curl of her voice on the last two words undoes him. His hips buck up into hers and his mouth falls open on another helpless gasp. 

Eowyn seals her lips over his, using her kiss to silence him. “Very quiet,” she breathes into the warm hollow of his mouth.


	4. M, Cassian/Jyn, POV switch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **anghraine** asked: POV, [if my life is mine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9558626)?
> 
> This turned out to be a very interesting prompt, because once I started writing I realized Jyn is nowhere near as sure of herself as she seems from Cassian’s POV…

Jyn is terrified, though she doesn’t let it show; she’s bluffed her way through the aftermath of rash impulses many times before. Still, what was she thinking? Why is Cassian so willing to let her do whatever she wants to him? This is — this is insane. But the half-teasing game she started has gained too much momentum to stop.

So she tries to sound confident, commanding, and when Cassian strips his shirt off at her demand the rush of lust in her belly shocks her. He stands against the wall obediently, all beautiful, lean and rangy strength. His total attention is riveted on her, focused on nothing but anticipating her next order. She doesn’t even have to touch him; just her eyes on him are enough to make his body react. She feels like a queen. A goddess.

 _Oh_ , she thinks. _So_ this _is why people do this kind of thing._

She swallows, her mouth gone dry, and wonders just how much pleasure she can make him endure.


	5. E, Cassian/Jyn, POV switch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Both **brynnmclean** and **firefeufeugo** asked for Jyn's POV in hiding and revealing.
> 
> (The first draft of hiding and revealing was actually from Jyn’s POV, so it was kind of entertaining to go back to that perspective.)

Cassian is watching her. Even with her eyes closed and her face pressed into the coarse weave of his jacket, Jyn can feel him noting every tiny gasp, every involuntary twitch. It makes her agonizingly self-conscious. At the same time, a burning current sparks through all her nerves, down to the base of her spine and the pulse between her legs. She can’t hide from Cassian. He sees her; he knows she’s about to lose control.

She’s an idiot and this is a terrible idea but she doesn’t want the desperately slow, steady rhythm of his fingers to stop. Her hips jolt up, begging for more, and she almost cries out. Each breath catches and snags unevenly in her lungs. She’s trembling with the urge to run away, but she holds herself still under the light touch of his hand.

* * *

Jyn can’t breathe, can’t see, she’s shaking like an earthquake—and then it hits. All the nerves in her core explode at once, firing out to the tips of her toes and her fingers, the roots of her hair, her eyelids—Every sinew in her body locks tight as she comes and she bites down on Cassian’s jacket to hold back a scream before she collapses against him.

It’s some time before Jyn can think at all. She keeps her face hidden in Cassian’s chest, fighting to stop the tremors still running through her. She can barely hear over the sound of her own ragged breathing, but it seems like everything around them is going on just as it was before, the low rumble of the movie soundtrack interrupted by catcalls and laughter.

Cassian’s hands are gentle on her back and he kisses the top of her head in an unexpectedly sweet gesture for someone who just made her come in a room full of strangers. Jyn tips her head back and peers at him in the dim light. If he looks the least bit smug, she’s going to slap him—he’s proved his point, no need to be a sore winner.

He’s smiling, but it’s soft and surprisingly tender. He doesn’t look like someone who won a bet; more like someone who was just given a gift.

She shivers suddenly, despite the thick blanket still pulled up over her shoulders. Would she ever have done this before? The thought is laughable. There’s no-one else she’d ever have trusted enough to let them touch her this way. Or even just to sit like this, holding her close and helpless, draped over his body and paying no attention to her surroundings.

“Jyn?” His arms tighten around her. “Are you okay?”

If only. She deflects his concern with a bad joke. To get away from her own thoughts, she presses her mouth to the only exposed part of his body, the base of his throat, and nips at the indentation there. She can see his pulse moving beneath his skin, feel his small noise of pleasure under her lips.

She can’t afford any more of this. It’s not smart, for either of them. 

“This movie sucks,” she mutters. “Let’s get out of here.”


	6. G, Jyn, prequel to Fixer-Upper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **jenniferjuni-per** asked: Before the beginning, please and thanks 😊
> 
> This takes place before the beginning of [Fixer-Upper](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10931721/).

The funny part is, Jyn never intended to buy a house. She wasn’t even looking.

But she got lost trying to find the restaurant she was supposed to have met Bodhi at half an hour ago. Fucking Google Maps had an aneurysm and sent her down the wrong side street. It recalculated the route with the speed of molasses and she ended up turning down another wrong street. Finally she pulled over in frustration and called Bodhi. While she waited for him to pick up, she noticed the _For Sale_ sign in front of the house on the corner.

It was just a small bungalow, painted slate grey, with a little porch—barely enough to keep the rain or the snow off your head while you opened the front door, really—and some kind of big crimson flower blooming to the side of the steps. Peonies, maybe? A blurry memory of her father bringing her mother a bouquet of the loose-petalled blossoms, and her radiant smile, suddenly surfaced.

Then Bodhi picked up, already making fun of her for being late, and they figured out that there were two restaurants with the same name and she’d entered the wrong one. Jyn drove off, cursing Steve Jobs under her breath, and forgot about the little bungalow.

Still, for some reason, she found herself driving down the same street the next weekend. The _For Sale_ sign was still there. She parked across the street, sat in her car, and stared at the house.

Jyn had a fairly impressive savings account for someone in her twenties, mainly because she was compulsively frugal. She couldn’t bring herself to waste money on expensive clothes or vacations or any of the other things single people her age were supposed to want.

But she wanted this house. It looked like… call her stupid, sentimental, but it looked like it could be a home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ack, I noticed a continuity error in this one while I was cross-posting it! /o\ How embarrassing. (Anyone who spots it & comments wins a prize - prompt fill of your choice!)


	7. M, Cassian/Jyn, POV switch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **anghraine** replied: POV on ‘so close’? 
> 
> This one was tough, since so close is definitely my tropiest, most OOC bit of writing. But hopefully it manages to be halfway believable…

Something was tickling Jyn’s ear and the back of her neck itched with tension: tension that had no possible outlet when they were one tiny motion away from being captured or killed. Only the fact that this Imp officer was thinking with his cock might save them. The whole situation was so ludicrously unlucky that hysterical laughter started to churn inside her, bubbling up from her stomach. She held her breath, trying to force it back, but it kept building like a sneeze.

And then Cassian kissed her, hard and firm, with no warning. She gasped into his mouth in shock. His lips were warm, dry, and his rough stubble was just beginning to rasp across her skin in a tantalizing way when he stopped and pulled back.

She stared up at him, her mouth still open, and he stared down at her. He was so close that she couldn’t focus on his face as a whole. Instead she saw only disconnected details: the strained lines etched on his forehead, the short bristles of his beard, the light from the tiny window above reflected in the dark brown of his irises. What she couldn’t see in his eyes was any clue to what the stang he was thinking.

She struggled to breathe quietly, steadily, while her heart pounded so hard that she was sure Cassian felt it thumping against his own chest. They were so close she could feel his pulse, after all. And her hand was pressed tight against an unmistakable sign of his own physical reaction to their closeness. Her breath stopped when she realized it, and her hand twitched.

Cassian must have thought she’d lost her mind. She could see the shock in his suddenly blank expression, his widening eyes. But his erection jumped and swelled to fill her hand.

What did that mean? Was he going to kiss her again? Her grip tightened involuntarily at the thought, and she saw Cassian bite back a gasp.

Jyn stared at the wet shine of his bottom lip. If she lifted up on her toes, just slightly, she could reach his mouth with hers. And she had clearly lost her head altogether, because the image of herself doing it wouldn’t go away. If they hadn’t been sprung from their hiding place at that moment, she feared she would have. But they’d been interrupted just in time.

On the flight back Jyn explained it to herself over and over: adrenaline plus forced proximity equalled autonomic physical reactions. Perfectly understandable. Nothing unusual. She was very carefully and thoroughly not looking at Cassian. And he seemed to be just as diligently avoiding her, until they landed.

On her way down the shuttle ramp she felt a ghostly trace of his presence behind her; she thought he might have a comment about what to say—or not to say—in their debrief, so she braced herself to speak to him.

But by the time she turned around, he was gone, his long stride taking him halfway down the ship’s ramp far ahead of her.


	8. G, Old Kingdom series, Sabriel as a child

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **rain-sleet-snow** asked: Trick or treat! :)
> 
> And now for something completely different: a fantasy canon, with a more traditional Hallowe’en feel…

At first, Minda didn’t see the girl sitting at the foot of the coffin. She was silent and still, and her dark hair and the black wool coat she’d put on over her nightclothes blurred into the darkness of the room. But when she turned her head, her face flashed white in the light of Minda’s candle. At the sudden movement Minda flinched and nearly sketched a mark of banishment before she recognized the apparition as a student, not a revenant or sending. She racked her brain for the girl’s name. “Sabriel? What are you doing?”

“Keeping watch over Isla, Miss Greenwood,” she said calmly. 

Death did not visit Wyverley College often, but it was not a stranger either. In a community of a few hundred souls, even if most of them were young and healthy, a few were bound to die each year—like poor Isla. The girl had taken a sudden purulent fever and died in the space of three days, before her parents could travel to see her. They were on their way now, but had refused the school’s offer to bury their daughter here; they wished to lay her to rest on their own land. And that meant the girl’s body had to wait here, closer to the border of the Old Kingdom than Minda liked.

Minda set her candle down and fixed the child with her sternest schoolmistress look. “Why would you do that?” 

Sabriel was still in the infant school, far too young to be in any of the Charter Magic classes Minda taught, and so quiet and self-contained that she hadn’t made much of an impression until now. Perhaps one of the older girls had set her a morbid dare.

“She doesn’t have a Charter Mark, and she hasn’t been burned nor buried,” Sabriel said, kicking her heels against the legs of the chair she sat on, for she was too short for them to touch the floor. “And the dark of the moon is a bad time for the dead.”

Fear traced up Minda’s spine and laid a cold finger at the base of her neck. That knowledge was necromancy, even if the child’s motives seemed good. Yet she bore a Charter Mark… 

“How do you know that?” she demanded. 

“Father taught me,” Sabriel said. “I’m too young to use the bells, or cross into Death, but I can watch to make sure something doesn’t come back out.”

Minda drew a deep breath, and pulled over another chair to sit beside Sabriel. “I shall watch with you, then.” 

And she’d soon be discussing this pupil with the Headmistress, who hadn’t thought to tell her that they’d enrolled the daughter of Abhorsen.


	9. G, Cassian & Jyn, babysitting Poe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Anonymous** asked: Hallowe'en apples! (I was also hoping for rebelcaptain with pregnancy or babies thrown into the mix? Thank you!)

“I can’t remember the last time I saw a baby, let alone held one.” Jyn had Poe in a tight pincer-grip under his armpits, holding him stiffly upright. His round dark eyes stared back at her with a disturbingly suspicious expression. “I think he knows I have no idea what I’m doing.”

Cassian shrugged. “Food, sleep, clean pants… as long as we can manage those he’ll be fine.”

Jyn couldn’t look away from Poe, and he wasn’t looking away from her. Cassian thought the six-month-old might win this staring contest until he blinked, yawned, and tipped forward to drop his head heavily on Jyn’s shoulder. The solid, trusting weight of him nestling against her neck clearly terrified her. Her hands shook but she managed to shift her grip to cradle his chubby thighs in one arm and support his back with the other. 

Poe’s sticky hand crept across her chest and grabbed for the crystal hanging around her neck. Before Jyn could react, he’d stuffed it in his mouth and started gumming on it. At the same time he twisted his other hand in the hair behind her ear and pulled, yanking her head to the side. 

“Cassian, help!” she begged in a desperate whisper.

Cassian wished he could record the moment for posterity (or at least for Bodhi, who would find it hilarious) but he knew better than to try. “Ah, c'mon, little cabbage,” he murmured, carefully untangling each tiny finger from Jyn’s hair. Pulling the crystal out of Poe’s mouth was harder, since he really didn’t want to stop chewing on it, but Cassian managed to substitute his finger as a teething toy and quickly scooped the baby out of Jyn’s arms before he realized what was going on.

Poe settled against Cassian’s chest, blinking and stretching one starfish hand out for Jyn, but she moved away. “No, you don’t.” His face folded up and turned crimson as he prepared to scream, and she hastily came back within reach. Poe tugged on the crystal again, pulling the cord taut.

“Will it hurt him if he chews on it?” Cassian asked. It was too big for him to swallow, at least.

“I guess not…” She pulled the necklace off over her head and dangled the shining pendant in front of Poe. He squirmed halfway out of Cassian’s hold to grab at it and shoved it into his mouth, drooling on the hard stone. “Shavit. Looks like it’s his, for now.”

Cassian smiled at her over her over Poe’s downy spikes of hair. “Sorry I’m not smart enough to outwit a baby. Kes will have to figure out a way to get it back for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pure silliness, but I figured a kid who grew up with a Force-sensitive tree in his backyard (which is apparently comics canon?) might have enjoyed teething on a kyber crystal.


	10. T, Cassian & Jyn, canonverse AU (meeting pre-Wobani)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **skitzofreak** asked: So for your trick or treat prompt thing: a rogue one (rebelcaptain for preference, but your call) fight scene! Bonus points if it includes Jyn, extra bonus points if she wins.

Jyn threaded the quickest route she knew back toward the spaceport, racing through alleys, taking desperate shortcuts through stinking garbage heaps and crooked lanes. But the troopers had gotten smarter, because when she burst out of a narrow passage they were ahead of her, blocking the tiny square she needed to cross.

At least there were only four of them.

The blaster she’d taken off the first trooper who tried to arrest her this morning was out of charge now. She used it as a club to knock a blaster out of the closest one’s hands, breaking fingers, and smashed it up into their chin. They toppled backward, fouling the other two troopers so that she could get close enough to take both of them out with blows where the plastoid armor left their necks bared.

Last one standing was an officer: no armor, no problem. He didn’t go for his sidearm—not good, they must want to take her alive—but punched her in the jaw. Her head snapped sideways, her skull rang, but she dropped under his next punch and kicked, smashing her boot into the side of his knee and sending him staggering sideways. She cracked her blaster across the back of his head for good measure and he dropped like a wet sack of flour.

She dropped the useless blaster to the ground, panting. Breathe. Think. How had the Imps gotten on to her? Were they looking for Liana Hallick or Jyn Erso? But that didn’t matter, right now nothing mattered but getting out of here—

A straggler, one lone trooper, jogged around the corner. Their blaster was already rising to take a shot—Jyn dropped flat to the ground for cover and fumbled for the secondary piece at her ankle, even though it was just a pea-shooter and didn’t have the range for the shot she’d have to make—

The brief whine of one precisely placed shot unzipped the air. The trooper crumpled, their right eyesocket a smoking hole.

Jyn whirled around, looking for whoever had just interfered in this totally under-control situation.

Someone stepped out of a shadowed alley to her left and nodded at the bodies on the ground. “Nice work.”

Jyn tossed her head to shake her hair out of her eyes and quickly scanned the newcomer. Humanoid male somewhere between 25 and 40; at least two weapons beside the modified blaster he’d just holstered. Tall, wiry, probably underfed judging by the gaunt edge of his cheekbones, although the thick parka he was wearing made it hard to be certain. Dark hair, dark eyes, the shadow of a beard that didn’t soften the sharpness of his jaw. Handsome, and knew it, because he was smiling at her in a way that was probably meant to be disarming.

She bared her teeth at him in a parody of his false cordiality. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Someone who needs to speak to a friend of yours.”

She made the most of what height she had by straightening up to the limit of her spine and sneered at him. “I don’t have any friends.”

“I’d like to keep you out of Wobani. Doesn’t that make me one?” The son of a karking schutta kept smiling at her. He knew she had no alternative to taking him at his word: her face was all over this system, her best current alias had just been blown up, and she didn’t have any way off this rock that didn’t involve going somewhere worse.

Jyn grudgingly swallowed her anger and dropped her useless blaster. “I guess we’ll find out.”


	11. G, Cassian & Jyn, bail bond AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **youareiron-andyouarestrong** asked: Rebelcaptain lawyer/bail bondsperson au

At first, Cassian doesn’t think much of the raised voices in his waiting room. He’s a criminal lawyer; some of his clients get heated. Kay can handle it.

Then there’s a crash and the thump of something smacking—hard—into the wall outside his office door. He jumps up and throws it open, but all he sees other than scattered chairs is a whirling tangle of Kay fighting someone he can’t get a clear look at. Kay uses his height as leverage to throw his opponent over his back and onto the floor with another rattling thud.

Time to intervene, or Cassian will be fielding more complaints from the building manager. “Kay! What the hell is going on?”

“This… person interrupted my surveillance of Tivik and exposed me,” Kay says in the clipped tone that indicates extreme annoyance. “I suggested she accompany me to your office for a discussion, but she attacked me.”

The person on the floor somehow twists out of Kay’s iron grip and bounces up. It’s a tiny woman wearing shit-kicking boots and a battered leather vest, brandishing a wicked-looking matte black extendable baton. She smacks it shut with a vicious click, tosses tangled hair out of her face, and turns the full force of green eyes acid-bright with fury on him. “I was bringing that crapsack Tivik in! Your PI friend here got in the way of an authorized detention. And then he dragged me here against my will, which is abduction.”

Cassian sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. Christ Almighty, preserve him from bounty hunters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did You Know: the US & the Philippines are the only countries in the world that have such a thing as bail bondspeople? Everywhere else, it’s kidnapping.


	12. G, Bodhi, therapy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **mardymaid** asked: I'd like to ask what you think Bodhi might say if he was asked to say 5 things he liked about himself publicly.

PATIENT: ENSIGN BODHI ROOK  
PARTIAL AUDIO TRANSCRIPT, THERAPY FILE 3.4.7c2544

 

—kay fine, ESS-6, are you recording now? Shavit, this better work, I’m not doing it twice.

So last time you told me this was an assignment, which makes no sense at all because I thought therapy droids were programmed to be helpful and this is absolutely useless. But you keep asking and asking and I’m pretty sure you’ll kriffing report me to Doctor Harr if I don't—

Anyway. Here goes. “Five things you like about yourself” by Bodhi Rook, as ordered.

One: I’m a pretty good pilot. Most of the time. When I have an idea where I’m going. I can fly more than just cargo shuttles, you know. Might not have been much call for it on Eadu but I’m certified on ships up to cruiser class.

And I’m a decent sabacc player, at least, better than people expect. I guess I don’t look like the kind of guy who can bluff. Sometimes having a face like this can be an advantage.

Uh, what’s the polite word for stubborn? Persistent? Yeah, persistent. Maybe that’s why Jyn [SEE: ERSO, JYN, SGT, FILE 3.4.5v3452] and I get along, neither of us like to give up until we have to. That’s not always a good thing, though.

Not that I have much to share these days, but I try to be generous. It was a principle where I was raised, how we were supposed to live on Jedha.

ESS-6: A tenet of your religion?

Not exactly, but it was important. How many is that?

ESS-6: Four.

Another one…? Force sakes. Fine, fine.

[5.9 seconds of silence]

I don’t really sing anymore, but I used to. [wordless humming in the key of C minor] My mother liked it; that was her favourite. But she was my mom, so. You know. I probably wasn’t actually that good.

Who cares if that one counts. I’m done, okay?

ESS-6: Acknowledged.

-30-  
END FILE


	13. G, Leia, “The General”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I asked for image prompts, and **rain-sleet-snow** sent me [this beautiful gif](https://incognitajones.tumblr.com/post/170441310398/thank-you-so-much-for-all-of-the-gorgeous-image).

“The General.”

There’s a title Leia hoped she’d never have to answer to again. She thought she’d managed to discard it for good, not like the others that trail at her heels inescapably: Princess (of a murdered people and a cloud of space junk), Senator (who couldn’t inspire her colleagues to defend democracy).

Stop being maudlin, she tells herself irritably. But war does that to her. “General” is just a word for a person who sends troops out on too many missions that are beyond all hope. And the fact that occasionally the missions succeed only encourages more people to put their lives in your hands. All those trusting young (and old) soldiers, eager to serve the cause.

She’s tired of being a figurehead. And this time she’ll have to do it alone: no brother, no husband…

Han’s reaction the first time was everything she’d secretly hoped for. “General what, nuisance? General know-it-all? Generally too big for your britches? Do they hand out rank badges to all the children around here, like candy?”

She’d enjoyed every moment of payback when he got his own stripes a few years later, and addressed him as General Solo every chance she had. Now he won’t be here to call her Generalissima, or General Alarm, or whatever other ridiculous nickname he could come up with on the spot.

Leia will take up the role again because it’s necessary, even without Han’s teasing to make it lighter. But she can’t carry the weight of it forever.


	14. T, Cassian/Jyn, kissing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **anghraine** prompted me with [this beautiful piece of art](https://i-am-drowning-in-the-rain.tumblr.com/post/165030337987/youre-my-home-jyn-and-cassian-climbing-atop-the) by @i-am-drowning-in-the-rain.

From the top of the pyramid, the view is breathtaking and the sunrise over the sea of trees is dazzling—but Cassian’s not looking. He’s seen it before. What he hasn’t seen is Jyn’s face, soft and open in the dawn light, golden sparks shining in her eyes like the sun on the green leaves.

Her smile breaks out like she can’t hold it back any longer, his favourite expression of hers—or no, maybe it’s the way her eyes flicker when she thinks about kissing him, like she is now (he assumes, because she’s cupping her hands around the back of his neck). She threads her fingers through his hair and scrapes her nails lightly over his scalp, making him shiver, before her hands slide along his jaw to draw his face up to hers.

His hands tighten at her waist as she leans down to drop a feather-light kiss on his mouth once, twice, again and again. Cassian likes it when Jyn demands, but he likes it just as much when she coaxes, suggesting where she wants him to go with the brush of her lips and the press of her tongue. Just to tease her, he changes course, kissing the delicate skin beneath her ear, and a nearly soundless groan rolls through him when her knees clamp around his ribs.

The sun shines in his face as it lifts above the stone peak and its warmth glows through his closed eyelids. Jyn tastes like sunshine, like the crisp breeze, like the open horizon. When she eases away, Cassian’s heart is racing and he’s a little breathless; he blames it on the long climb up.

He doesn’t want to climb down just yet, so he pulls her back for another kiss.


	15. G, Rey, pre-canon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **englishable** sent in this [stunning photograph](https://media.techeblog.com/images/annual-solar-eclipse.jpg) of an eclipse in progress, and although she suggested a couple of pairings, something about the lone figure visible equalled “solitude” in my brain…

“This is an image of the ‘Moon of Gold’ eclipse as it appears from the surface of the Core planet of Naboo,” the holovid narrator drones. Rey stares and stares at the luminous crescent, freezes it to stare longer, its light reflecting from her metal bowl as she rips off a chunk of bread. Her eyes water and she sniffs, wipes a smear hastily off her face. Waste of hydration to cry.

Jakku has its own beauties—she’s learned to find them in things like the vast sinuous dunes, the tiny red spinebarrel flowers that spring up after the annual rains, and the night sky thick with glittering remnants of the Battle of Jakku.

But they’re familiar now, and Rey is hungry for fresh things; she wants to see new stars, to visit new places. To fly real ships, not just her simulator, and orbit new planets.

One day. One day soon, her family will come back and take her away with them, and she’ll see so many wondrous things: green forests and white snow and oceans of deep blue.

She wipes her face again, swallows, and presses play.


	16. G, Jyn & Steela Gerrera, canonverse AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **ohbeeone** suggested something based on [this lovely collection of sketches](https://nyxtastic.tumblr.com/post/169361227338/ok-but-what-if-the-other-gerrera-adopted-jyn). I don’t watch _Star Wars: Rebels_ , so I knew nothing about Steela Gerrera, but after a quick research dive, I would like to request a full-length version of this AU. Someone get on it, please!

First, noise—the hatch scraping open—and then light. Two things Jyn’s nearly forgotten while she’s been here in the dark and the silence pressing down on her for who knows how long.

She scuttles backward into a crack between two rocks, away from the beam of light piercing what now feels like safety. Her eyes watering, she risks a glimpse up at the hazy bright circle of the open hatch, but all she can see is a blurry shadow.

“Jyn?” a quiet voice calls, low and lilting. “Are you there, Jyn? Your mam and da sent me to find you.”

Jyn can’t speak. She wants to call out in answer, wants to crawl into the light, but she’s frozen by the memory of her mother falling to the ground. Can she trust whoever this is? All Mama said was to stay here until someone came to get her…

Jyn decides to risk it. She crawls out into the pool of light on the cave floor, dragging Tookie after her.

“There you are. Hello, Jyn. How did you get down there?”

“I went down the rope ladder.” Jyn squints up into the light. She still can’t see more than a human-shaped blob.

“Is it still there? Can you come back up, or do you want me to come down and get you?”

Jyn wants out of this dark, scary cave. And if this person isn’t as nice as they seem, being on the ground instead of under it will give her a better chance to get away. (She’s proud of herself for figuring that out. Papa would tell her that was sound reasoning.)

When at last the two of them have managed to get Jyn out of the hole, the person at the top turns out to be a woman. She’s older than Mama, Jyn thinks, but she has strong hands and smooth dark skin and fancy braids coiled around her head in patterns. “I’m Steela. Your parents knew my brother Saw. Did they ever talk about us?”

Jyn shakes her head. Her whole body is shivering and shaky from the cold, and she really really wishes she could still suck on her thumb but she’s too embarrassed to do that in front of this strange grown-up.

The woman brushes Jyn’s tangled hair out of her eyes. “Do you know where your parents are?”

“He killed Mama,” Jyn says, and hearing the words out loud does it. Now she can’t stop crying, blubbering like a baby, her nose running and her cheeks burning hot.

Steela takes her face in both hands and kneels down. “Oh, little chick.” She might have hugged Jyn, or Jyn might have launched herself at Steela’s chest—hard to tell which happened first, but it ends with Jyn folded tight in her arms and wailing into her coat.


	17. G, Kylo Ren & Rey, holocron

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **red-applesith** sent a link to [this piece of her own art](http://red-applesith.tumblr.com/post/155022220872/takes-a-deep-breath-here-is-my-piece-for-project), which gave me all kinds of Force artifact feels…

It was old, unthinkably old. Rey didn’t know how she knew that; she didn’t even know what the small metal cube was or what it was supposed to do. But something in its aura breathed an ancient air. Rey wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that it was older than the crumbling temple she stood in.

The feel of the space around her altered. The hair on the back of her neck rose, and she knew if she turned to look behind her she’d see him. She didn’t turn.

“What is it?” she asked, craning her neck to get a better look at the object on the pillar. On every side she could see it was deeply engraved with angular designs that teased her mind with a sense of hidden meaning.

“Haven’t learned anything from those stolen texts, I see.” But the derision in his voice seemed rote, half-hearted. “It’s a holocron, a device that stores the memories or knowledge of a Force user.”

“How do I open it?” Rey crouched to examine the holocron at eye level. It was a beautiful object, even if you discounted the priceless knowledge that might be inside.

“Some holocrons have keys, some have gatekeepers.” His voice took on the dry, academic tone it always did whenever he lectured her on the theory and history of the Force. 

“Well, if this one does, they must be asleep.”

“Have you tried meditating on it?”

“Yes,” she snapped. “It’s not listening. Or it’s not interested in responding.” With a fingertip she traced one of the intricate interlocking carvings on the side. “Do these mean anything, or are they just decorative?”

She could almost feel his arm brush hers as he moved to stand beside her and his nearly-perceptible hand reached for the cube.

But as soon as he touched the holocron, light cracked through the engraved lines and burst in coruscating blue ripples over their faces. Rey shoved back her instinctive jealousy (of course it opened for _him_ ) and leaned closer, eager to discover what it held.


	18. T, Cassian & Jyn, mission FUBARed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two prompts combined because at some point during the writing, I realized they formed a matching set:
> 
> 1) **intellectual-carrot** asked “Not to be too literal, but how do you feel about the dynamic in [these gifs](http://intellectual-carrot.tumblr.com/post/164484928891/leralynne-vivelareysistance-funko-star-wars)?“ (the answer is I love it and I couldn’t resist stealing a bit from the tags)  
> 2) the second half was inspired by **skitzofreak** sending [this piece](https://skitzofreak.tumblr.com/post/170321853979/crazy-fruit-hey-there-wonderful-person-rumor) by **crazy-fruit**

Jyn swiped grit and dust from her stinging eyes. Where the hell was Cassian? She took a few cautious steps sideways, and almost tripped over him in the haze.

He’d dropped to one knee and was taking unhurried, precise aim at the Imperial positions above. The troopers had their backs turned, not expecting any fire from inside the base, so he had a clear shot and could pick them off easily—at least the first three. Then they realized where the bolts taking them out were coming from and turned to fire at Cassian, who was equally exposed in this position.

“Cassian!” Jyn yanked at the shoulder of his jacket and pulled him over backward. They thumped to the ground, his body squeezing the breath from her. A bolt sizzled past and the searing heat of it crisped her hair. “We have to get out of here _now_.”

“I can make the shot!” Cassian was already rolling away, struggling to his knees, trying to bring his rifle up. “I can take them out—”

“No!” She threw herself backward around the corner of the building, dragging him with her by the sleeve of his jacket clamped in her fingers. “We don’t have cover any longer, you’ll get shot full of holes!”

Yeah, Cassian might make the shot—he was that good—but he wouldn’t survive it. And Jyn wasn’t going to let that happen, even though they were supposed to target the base commander if possible. They had the intel that was their primary objective; it didn’t make sense for Cassian to risk his life now.

He was still thinking about it, she could tell, his eyes skipping past her to focus on the chaos of the trooper barracks. “Don’t make me come back for you,” she warned him.

He looked at her, startled. “You’d come back?”

“Did I fucking stutter? Of course I would,” she growled, and pushed him ahead of her. “But I shouldn’t have to. Get moving!”

* * *

Smoke from flash grenades billowed through the narrow alley, and Cassian lost sight of Jyn in the haze: one moment she was a dark shadow taking out bucketheads with brutal efficiency, blunt kicks and elbow and truncheon strikes, the next she’d vanished. But he had to make it to the ship, he had the chip that was the objective of this whole mission… if it didn’t get offworld the whole thing was pointless.

So Cassian turned and ran for it down the other end of the winding lane. Its high walls held in and concentrated the acrid, choking fog; he had to get out of here. A lumbering metal figure emerged from the fog and though he knew it couldn’t possibly be Kay, for an instant he nearly let his guard down—until the droid tried to smash his head into the wall.

He ducked under the blow and turned again to climb when a pincer grip fastened on his collar, dragging him back down. He shrugged the jacket off with only a slight pang (it had been hard to get, and he wouldn’t be so lucky again any time soon) and climbed, hauling himself up to the rooftops where the air was clear and he could breathe. But he still couldn’t see Jyn in the fog below.

“Kay! Where’s Jyn?” Cassian coughed out of a throat raw from chemicals. No answer from the comm. He sprinted for the ship, telling himself he’d hand the chip over to Kay and go back for her.

But when he slammed through the hatch, lungs bursting with the need for filtered air, the droid answered his cry with “Jyn Erso’s comm is still functional, unlike yours, and she is approximately two point six minutes away. She ordered me to start the takeoff sequence and tell you that she is safe. Which I’m doing because it makes sense, not because she told me so,” Kay added peevishly.

And two point four minutes later, Jyn did come striding out of the fog, her knuckles bloody, her eye swollen half-shut with a bruise rising under it—and wearing his jacket. 

“Maybe I’ll hang on to this for a while,” she said, her grin smug behind a trickle of blood reddening her lip. “Finders keepers.”


	19. G, Imperial Jyn & undercover Cassian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **thestarbirdfromtheashes** asked: From the 50 Dialogue Prompts -- your choice! 45. “How much of that did you hear?” | 49. “I don’t want to screw this up.” | 50. "People are staring."
> 
> (I managed to work in two of the prompts!)

“How much of that did you hear?”

“Enough to get you in serious trouble, Miss Erso.”

Her pale face lost even more colour, smears of dark eye makeup and lips stained the shade of old blood the only features standing out against skin bleached white with fear. His opinion of her went up, though, when she stepped closer to him instead of uselessly trying to flee. She lifted a hand that shook only a little and traced the corners of the rank pin on his chest.

“Oh, come now, surely you can recognize a joke when you hear one, Lieutenant…?” The faint huskiness in her low voice could be flirtation instead of fright. She wasn’t a professional spy, or a very practiced one, but she was dedicated enough to give it all she had. Almost admirable.

“Willix,” Cassian said, inclining his head a precise, minimally courteous fraction like the Imperial officer he was supposed to be.

“Lovely to meet you, Lieutenant Willix.” Erso was still shaking under the thin silk of her dress, but she produced a creditably alluring smile. “Perhaps you and I ought to discuss what you overheard. I wouldn’t want you to _misunderstand_ anything.”

Watching the way she turned her sinuous body until her hips brushed against the front of his, Cassian felt certain she had at least one weapon hidden on her. His credits were on a small carry blaster somewhere under that clinging skirt—possibly a sharp stick pin in her up-swept hair, too.

“I’m certainly willing to listen,” he said at last, and watched the tension in her bare shoulders slacken.

“Good.” She bowed her head until he could see the delicate nape of her neck and her hand slid down from his rank pin, down the placket of his tunic, down toward his belt.

Cassian took one step back. “That would be… indecorous. People are staring.” He tipped his head slightly back down the hall, toward the room full of unfriendly eyes watching avidly for any notable misstep.

The fabric of her flimsy dress shimmered as she drew in a breath and he could see her awareness of the trap she was caught in settle over her again, tightening every muscle in her body.

He held out his hand. “Give me a dance now, and we can—talk—later.”

Her fingers were ice-cold but strong as they gripped his hard enough to hurt. He’d have to be careful once she got him alone. Even untrained, she was desperate enough to be dangerous.


	20. G, Cassian/Jyn, bedsharing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little something for **AstridMyrna** , who said: “I always wondered how they would react when they reach that point that they don’t have to wrap around each other because they feel secure for the first time in forever.”

The hotel clerk is apologetic but firm: only one ocean-side room is left, and it’s designed for much larger humanoid species. Cassian shrugs. They’ll manage, and it’s hardly relevant anyway. They’re here to observe Imperial traffic at the offshore spaceport and for that, the room is perfect.

Jyn complains about the height of the bathroom fixtures and everything else, muttering that she feels like a child. But she doesn’t have a single bad word to say about the bed.

It’s massive—larger than the cabin of some shuttlecraft, large enough for both of them to lie spread out like starfish without touching each other. The mattress is firm and the sheets are soft. When Cassian wakes next morning he’s warm and relaxed and for once his back isn’t demanding that he get up and stretch it out as soon as possible. He knows Jyn is there, can sense her presence, but she’s not pressed against him skin to skin.

Any other sleeping quarters he and Jyn have had the chance to share before have been cozy, at best. He’ll still take them without hesitation because being with Jyn—even in a space too small for one person, let alone two—is always preferable to being without her. But there’s no denying that it’s much more comfortable having this acreage of mattress to stretch out on.

On the other side of the bed Jyn stirs, inching one hand further and further out until her arm is fully extended but still nowhere near him. She lifts her head, bleary-eyed, wriggles and squirms and rolls over (and over) until she’s finally close enough to tuck her head under his chin. He wraps his arm around her and sighs, enjoying the familiar sensation of how snugly all of her fits against him. This feels right… but it’s also nice that his arm won’t go numb from being in this position for a few hours.

A little shamefully, Cassian hopes they get to stay another night.

“I can hear you feeling guilty.” Jyn’s laugh sends little tremors through her body into his.

He can’t think of anything to do but stall. “What?”

“It’s okay, Cassian. It’s not so bad to have more space. For one thing, when you sleep facing away from me I can’t hear you snore—”

Well, _that_ slander cannot be allowed to stand.

The subsequent wrestling-tickling bout eventually resolves into Jyn draped over Cassian, pinning him with her warm weight like a merciless blanket. “I love you when you’re all the way across the galaxy,” she mumbles into the line of his neck. “A few metres of bed is nothing.”

That night they fall asleep in curves that echo each other, half-circles enclosing a wide empty space between them. But their hands reach out into the centre, fingertips just close enough to touch.


	21. T, Rey/Ben Solo, sequel to Last Train (modern AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Anonymous** asked: Trick or treat ~♡ Last Train verse with prompt #14 or 42 from the sensory prompts.
> 
> A little coda to [Last Train](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5836495/) which I managed to work both prompts into…

Rain pattering slow against glass, a faint hiss until the wind picks up and throws it harder. Silence except for the arpeggios of the rain and, set against that, the steady metronome of a wristwatch. 

Rey opens her eyes to a dim room, blocky furniture looming out of the shadows and a crack of cobwebby grey light through the carpet. Not her apartment: a hotel room. Ben still curled behind her, breathing into her hair and giving off heat like a furnace.

Rey’s overslept. For the first time since her first year of residency, she forgot to set her alarm, and has no idea what time it is.

She grabs for the heavy watch on the bedside table, Ben’s ostentatiously-successful lawyer timepiece. It reads—eight o'clock? Rey squints at the wedge of light reflected in the black screen of the TV. Not eight in the morning. Right. She met Ben at noon, after her shift ended. So she’s got another four hours before she needs to be back at the hospital.

Ben stirs, his hand curling around her bare thigh, and he makes a vaguely interrogative noise that she interprets as “Do you need to go?”

“Not yet.” She yawns, caught off-guard by her lassitude; she never sleeps this soundly during her night rotations. “An hour or two. I’m on at midnight…” She could go back to sleep. Instead she rolls over, folds her arms across his broad chest and rests her chin on them, staring at him. She can’t stop smiling.

He pulls her hair out of her face and kisses her. Her mouth tastes like stale coffee (as does his), but he doesn’t seem to care.


	22. G, Baze & Chirrut, ghosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **rain_sleet_snow** asked: Trick or treat - Chirrut and Baze as ghosts!

“Are you lost, child?”

Noora skittered sideways, her shoulder bumping into the rough stone of the alley, startled—and angry that she hadn’t seen or heard this busybody coming. When she turned to spit at him, though, he was old, and blind, and (by the red under-robe) some kind of religious; so she had to be polite three times over. She swallowed and said, “No, thank you, uncle. I know my way from here.”

“To where?” he asked, and she let her face scrunch into an annoyed grimace for a second—it wasn’t like he could see her—except that his sly answering grin made it seem like he had. “One must know the way, or the destination, if not both.”

“Stop bothering the girl.” A much bigger, broader man appeared from the dark doorway behind him and Noora bit back another squeak of surprise. “She doesn’t want to hear your nonsense.”

“But she might want to know the way home,” the blind man said, and pointed with his staff down the left-hand fork of the alley, which was nothing like the shortest route to the place she was squatting. Noora looked at him skeptically… and noticed that his boots didn’t stir the dust of the road.

She should have known. It was the season of spirits, and ghosts were everywhere tonight; but most of them were thin and wispy, nothing more than insubstantial echoes. These two looked solid, and the strange blue tinge to their shadows could have been nothing but the effect of the dying hover-lantern that gave the whole street a weirdly flickering aura.

The gruff one spoke again. “Sometimes—not often, mind you, but sometimes—he talks sense.” And winked.

Maybe this was their idea of a prank; ghosts could be nasty. But, dead or not, he was a holy man and respect was his due. So she set off down the way he’d pointed out. She could always cut through the next lane back to the right direction.

And then her sister stepped out of the shadows, walking toward her—Surri, who’d been gone for months, since the day niJedha died in flames. Noora wept, thankful to have seen her ghost at last; but Surri cried out her name, and grabbed her, and Noora knew that she was real.


	23. T, Cassian/Jyn, fingertips

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **anghraine** asked: Trick or treat! Jyn/Cassian, "The feel of fingertips trailing over a bare shoulder blade"?
> 
> (This one is a personal favourite.)

Afterward, Cassian couldn’t make himself move. He stayed silent in the dark, listening to his own pulse decelerate, feeling Jyn’s breath soft and even against his collarbone. Her arms were firm around him. His mind had gone blank and dazed with contentment… no, that word was for when you were dry and not hungry and no-one was actively trying to kill you. It didn’t capture the breadth of this emotion, that started in the body, yes, but spread out into a golden haze of indefinable warmth and pleasure.

Her fingertips began to skim long, unhurried arcs along the angle of his shoulder. When she found the thin scar just underneath it she traced it once, twice, and he shivered. “Knife?” she asked sleepily, and he nodded into her hair. She kept tracing the rough scored line back and forth, down toward his spine and up to the point of his shoulderblade.

Cassian didn’t remember how he got all of his scars, but he remembered that one: someone had tried to stab him from behind, but luckily they were in a hurry. Instead of punching between his ribs, the point had hit the bone of his shoulder and skidded harmlessly down, tearing a shallow slice. And by the time he was back on base, bacta for the wound would’ve been both unnecessary and pointless, so the scar stayed.

Her lips brushed against the stubble on his throat, hesitant and tender. She didn’t say anything, just kept tracing the scar. Under her fingertips he felt his pulse rush through his still-beating heart, through the dead tissue of the scar, slow and steady and powerfully alive.


	24. G, Rey, floating dust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **youareiron-andyouarestrong** asked: Dust floating in golden air + trick or treat!
> 
> My thought process here went something like “dust –> sand –> desert –> REY REY REY”

Rey blinks in the sunlight flooding in through the riven command bridge of the ship, so bright it pierces even the polarized lenses of her goggles. The massive freighter’s keeled at such an acute angle, half-buried in the sand, that the layered decks tilted up and away from her at a sharp gradient. She won’t find anything left worth salvaging here without a climb.

Well, after thirty years there are no rich wrecks left in the graveyard of Jakku; all the easy pickings were seized long ago. Each season Rey has to go farther, scratch harder, hang on tighter and squeeze through narrower access ducts to make her living.

She looks up into the dazzling light, grains of dust and sand orbiting around her in the muffled air currents that are barely an echo of the wind outside whining over the ship. She flexes her fingers, tightens her gloves and checks her arm wraps before starting the climb.

The maintenance deck—the bottom deck, meaning the highest in this upside-down ship—is higher than she thought. She doesn’t look down, just focuses on the dust dancing before her eyes. It’s a risk, a bigger one than she should take… but if it’s this difficult to get to, it’s possible there might actually be a decent haul left for her.

She glances up once more. She’ll go as far as she can along this ledge of sheared metal. That’s all.

She’s hungry, though, and thirsty, and the day’s work has leached more strength from her muscles than she realized. At first the bright specks in front of her eyes are just more dust, then they bloom into sparks moving in mesmerizing patterns across a blood-red field… and then they’re spinning around her as her foot slips—

Her fingers slide down the warm metal of the pipe she grabbed at, her only chance is to reach for a better hold but it’s too far, she can’t feel the lip of the next deck even at the farthest extension of her straining arm. She desperately pushes once more from her toes, shoving her whole body up, up—and just as the wobbling foothold cracks and disintegrates beneath her, she grabs it. 

Her shaking arms barely haul her up to the slanted deck where she collapses, panting, and watches the golden dust disturbed by her ascent dance around her like fireflies.


	25. G, Kylo Ren, reality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **englishable** asked: Is it too late to say trick or treat?! Prompt 54 on that list could be awesome, if you didn’t already have something you were itching to write.
> 
> #54: “the moment when reality starts to make sense again”
> 
> Uh, warning for Kylo being Kylo, I guess?

Once it took shape in his head, it was so obvious—this is what Kylo had always been meant to do. How stupid he’d been to believe that Snoke would ever have let him grow into a threat. The moment he saw that his student had discovered a peer, of course he’d taken steps to end it.

And Rey had been brave enough to step forward into the trap. So killing Snoke had been the only thing to do, and the most satisfying moment of his life.

When the two of them were fighting side by side, it was like a dislocated joint had snapped back into place: the background drone of grinding pain was gone, the Force flowed smoothly through him, everything was simple. The world made sense again.

His next mistake was believing that they shared the same reality.

It was so plain, why couldn’t she see? The only serious obstacle blocking their path was gone—he’d destroyed it! Skywalker was irrelevant, Hux was laughable, and his mother… Leia didn’t matter. Let her have her surrogate son and her copycat Rebellion, a feeble attempt to recapture her political daydreams. He and Rey were what the galaxy needed, and with the power they shared they could bring it to heel. He could see it as clearly as he’d seen the vision of them fighting back to back, her snarl as she killed his enemies.

But she—she _refused_ to see it, choosing the useless rebels who’d never done anything but hold her back. What universe did she live in, where this didn’t make sense? The Force itself had linked them! This was their reality and together they could shape it into whatever was best… but she left, and their worlds split into completely different universes. Where an old man sacrificing himself in a pathetic waste of power meant more than his offer of rule. Where he was left on his knees watching the fool’s gold of his childhood disappear and his future vanish into darkness again.


	26. T, Cassian/Jyn, stargazing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **literatiruinedme** asked: *drops in through the ceiling with Starbucks and some hallowe'en apples ((I think I have the context here correct?))* is it too late to offer my soul for snuggling in an unorthodox location?
> 
> Not sure how unorthodox this is, but I hope the snuggling is satisfactory!

The lack of light pollution on this backwater moon makes the Queen’s Necklace meteors brighter than Jyn’s ever seen them before. Streaks of light fall from the Kathol sector in trails of glittering fire.

She doesn’t realize how long she’s been out here and how low the temperature’s dropped until she shivers, and can’t stop. She hugs herself, rubbing her arms briskly, and feels Cassian move up behind her, his solid heat at her back a welcome contrast.

“Do you want to go in?” 

She shakes her head. “Not yet…”

She remembers a night like this on Lah’mu, her mother tracing the bright arcs with her finger and explaining to Jyn what they were. Her father had passed his palm over her head, smoothing her flyaway braids… she shivers again, her teeth chattering despite her attempt to clamp her jaw shut.

Cassian wraps his arms around her, folding her inside his jacket as well as his embrace, and she sighs, leaning back into his blood-heat. His warm chin rests on top of her head and she nearly closes her eyes in contentment—but then she’d miss what she came to see. So she blinks and stares up at the jewelled sky, out into the vast universe, feeling almost like a part of it. As though one day when she and Cassian join those stars it won’t be so bad to be unbound, scattered into eternity.

His arms tighten around her and she curls her hands around his arms, holding them to her. They sit on a crumbling stone plinth with starmaps millennia old carved in its sides and Jyn lets herself nestle into Cassian with her cheek on his chest, her head turned up to the sky. He watches the stars too, and sometimes her; he brushes her hair out of her eyes with a kiss to her temple.

They stay until they’re cold and damp with dew. Once the peak of the meteor shower passes, Jyn turns her head and drops little kisses along the scratchy bristles of Cassian’s jaw. He rumbles in his chest, a wordless plea for more, so she lifts her mouth and seeks his out in long, breathless, lazy kisses that make her head spin like the galaxy whirling around the planet they’re on.


	27. G, Cassian & Jyn, gritty eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AstridMyrna** asked: Trick or treat! How about rebelcaptain "gritty eyes when you stare in a fire too long"

The ship’s survival kit burned in the crash, along with everything but the clothes on their backs. For shelter all they’d found was this shallow cave, barely a dent in the mountainside, and at this elevation it was cold enough that they had to risk some kind of fire or freeze.

She told Cassian to stay and scrape dry lichen off the stone while she scavenged for whatever she could find on the forest floor before dark. He didn’t argue, his eyes dull, so she knew he was hurt worse than he wanted to admit. If he wasn’t fighting with her over who got to rest—well, she’d deal with it when she got back and hope he hadn’t passed out.

He hadn’t, but he didn’t look any better. Coughs shook his body in the frigid, lung-slicing air of the high peaks. If no-one answered their encrypted distress call, they’d have to hike downslope tomorrow in hopes of finding people who could help or some kind of settlement. She thought they’d landed on the side of the continent that was outside the Imperial occupation zone, but if she was wrong…

She steadfastly ignored that anxiety, since there was nothing she could do about it for now, and dumped her small pile of deadwood in the most sheltered cranny where the wind wouldn’t blow it out.

It felt like hours, but eventually with a little help from her blaster on a low setting and the lichen Cassian had scraped off with his knife, they got a fire started. They had to keep it small for stealth, and since the wood was mostly damp it smoked badly. Jyn’s eyes were already burning from the acrid chemical smoke of their burning ship.

She blinked away stinging tears and made her tone as matter of fact as possible. “I’ll take first watch.” Cassian looked like he wanted to argue, but held it back and nodded silently. He curled up with his back to the fire to keep the smoke out of his lungs as much as possible, and she got him to wet his throat with a sip of the water in her belt canteen.

She sat on the ground with her knees drawn up to hold in what warmth she could and watched the darkness. Vague after-images of trees and rocks faded in and out of her vision with each flicker of the fire, like faulty holographs. Sparks rose in waves and spirals, dancing on the heated air above the flames, and her eyes were drawn up to where they moved among the stars in the sky. She felt caught between the falling and the rising lights, hypnotized, as though she were floating weightless in space instead of trapped on the ground.

Jyn blinked and fought the urge to rub her stinging eyes. That would only make them worse, but it was hard not to dig her knuckles in and work the gritty feel out of her eyeballs. She blinked again, sparks and stars blurring together in her vision. She hadn’t been seriously hurt in the crash, but now the adrenaline buzz had drained away and all of her scrapes and bruises and aching muscles were clamoring for attention. It was colder, too, or maybe that was just the come-down leaving her chilly.

A familiar parka dropped over her shoulders and Cassian sat down beside her. She looked sideways, noting that his eyes were as red-rimmed and gritty with fatigue as hers. “Sleep,” he told her.

She shrugged, rejecting the suggestion with an irritated huff. “I can’t.”

He sighed. “Then we’ll stay awake together.” He leaned into her, bracing more of his weight on her shoulder. They held each other up, counter-balancing their mutual exhaustion, and waited for dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **TinCanTelephone** wrote a [sequel to this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17232089) that you should check out!


	28. G, Finn & Rey (& others), academic AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **mnemehoshiko** asked: hallowe’en apples!!
> 
> based on these [little headcanon snippets](https://incognitajones.tumblr.com/tagged/academic-AU)

You wouldn’t think so, but the opening reception of the university’s annual “Diversity in Academia” conference is usually a pretty good time. Finn gets to hang out with Rey and make fun of the keynote speech they just suffered through. And the wine may be terrible, but at least it’s free, thanks to the white guilt of the philanthropist paying for the whole thing.

Rey waves at someone on the other side of the room and Finn sees that jerk Kylo, or whatever his pretentious pen name is, waiting in line at the open bar, arms folded across his chest and glaring impartially at everyone. She holds up three fingers and he nods.

“What’s he doing here?” White, rich, and straight (as far as Finn knows)—the dude could be the poster boy for the hegemony of privilege.

“I told him he should come,” Rey shrugs, tugging at her shoulder strap; she never looks comfortable in dresses, even when they're sleeveless. Finn frowns. He doesn’t get this frenemy thing she and Kylo have going now but he doesn’t like it. At all.

“There’s Rose!” She flings a hand up and waves in the other direction. Finn sees a tiny, striking Asian woman in a red dress weaving through the crowd toward them. “From Engineering? You know her, she’s helping me with that moving hand installation I’m working on.”

Right. Finn still doesn’t understand why she wants to create a ten-foot-tall articulated hand out of junk that people can move by putting their hand into a glove. If he gives her a chance, though, Rey will go on for hours about the intersection between human and machine, so he looks around for another topic of conversation.

Erso and Andor are standing over by the other bar, dark heads bent together in a private conversation that seems extremely serious. Not that they’re the light-hearted, giggly type in general. He nudges Rey. “What’s going on there? Trouble in paradise? I thought they ended up moving in together after he landed the MacArthur.”

“That’s not a good sign,” Rey says, frowning. “They’re both on the bargaining committee and I hear negotiations aren’t going well.”

“They aren’t.” Rose joins them with a glass of white wine in her hand. “Be prepared to walk out at the start of next semester.”

Finn curses long and low. “I can’t afford to go on strike again, the lease on my place is up soon.”

“Can you afford _not_ to support your colleagues, Phineas?” Rose snaps.

“Whoa there, Mother Jones,” Finn says. “Solidarity forever, sure, but I didn’t come to this thing for a lecture from my union rep. Just the free hors d’oeuvres.”

“Oh, come on, you guys, not right now,” Rey cuts in with a nervous laugh. “I want to enjoy this. Hey, here comes Kylo with our drinks!”

Finn bites his bottom lip to hold in a sigh.


	29. T, Cassian, collateral damage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A ficlet for **siachti** and **englishable** who probably weren’t expecting something quite this grim.

Your mistakes aren’t the worst of it, other Fulcrum agents had warned him. You might expect that, but no.

They sting, they wound—how could it not, knowing that your error, _your_ wrong choice, led to people dying?—but they also reflect imperfect knowledge. Time pressure. Not seeing the terrain clearly through the fog of war. Things that, as clichéd as it is to say, could happen to anyone.

Other times, it’s been the harsh demands of self-preservation. Tivik was bad, but at least he’d done his own killing that time. Looked the man in the eye. Had a reason more pressing, less abstract than the calculus of what was to be gained in future.

No, the deaths you let happen with clean hands and clear sight are the worst.

Every time he leaves a city knowing exactly when it will be bombed. Every time a ship jumps straight into an ambush because a warning would be too obvious. Every time he and Draven agree they can’t act on intercepted intelligence yet, because it could give away their source and choke off the flow of valuable information. Every time he stands aside, watching the numbers on a screen tick up and up.

Cassian’s silence has killed more than his hands ever will.


	30. G, Cassian/Jyn, survive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Day 4 of Rebelcaptain Appreciation Week, prompt “Survive.”

Rebel Intelligence relies on more physical data than a lot of units, unsurprisingly; analog documents are more secure, less easily corrupted. But they’re also bulkier and harder to store or move. During the evacuation of Echo Base, the entire contents of Intelligence HQ ended up being hastily shovelled into boxes and tossed on to various escaping ships.

Now they have to re-organize the whole set up and Jyn is sorting through storage cubes of random papers and flimsi pages. So far, it’s included lists of undercover operatives in the Rishi quadrant, an analyst’s terrible attempt at a Chandrilan sonnet, and a report with some interesting points about Imperial over-reliance on mechanized transport in urban environments. The next thing she finds, opening a sheet folded into quarters, is a picture.

It’s not a threedee holo, just a flat digital image, slightly out of focus. Two grinning young men—boys, really—stand in front of a U-wing fighter with their arms slung around each other’s shoulders. They’re both wearing Rebel-issue fatigues (baggy and overlong, clearly too big for them) and black sleeveless shirts.

One of them is Cassian.

Jyn tilts her head and blinks, startled by her own recognition. How did she know it was him so quickly? He looks very different in the picture—his hair is long, longer than hers is now. His face is softer in both features and expression, sharp jawline blurred by a layer of baby fat. There’s a smudge on his upper lip that’s probably an ill-advised attempt at a mustache. He looks achingly young: much too young to be wearing that uniform.

She looks sidelong at the man sitting beside her. When he notices the sheet in her hand, he peers down at the faded image and smiles.

Jyn asks, “How old—?”

“Sixteen,” Cassian answers before she can finish the question.

She can see why young Cassian was so valuable to the Rebellion. With that face, he could have passed as a twelve-year-old on some planets, and the illusion of innocence is always a tactical advantage. Today he looks far older than his years at first glance. But then, so does she.

“Who’s that with you?” she asks at random, and bites her tongue in mortification immediately afterward. She hopes that won’t bring up bad memories.

But no, Cassian is still smiling, and his face hasn’t gone immobile in that way it does when he’s repressing a memory. “Kes Dameron. That was just before he went into Spec Ops. He’s with the Pathfinders now.”

“I met his wife,” Jyn recalls. “Shara, the pilot.”

He bumps his shoulder against hers, warm and solid. “No other comments? I thought for sure you’d have something to say about the moustache.”

“Oh, is that what it is?” she teases him. “I thought you’d just forgotten to wash your face.”

Jyn looks from his dark eyes back down at their reproduction. In the picture, the skin around them is smooth instead of a web of faint lines and creases, but their expression is familiar. That’s what she recognized. Despite the cocky grin on his face, young Cassian had the same stony determination in his gaze that he does a decade later.

As far as Jyn knows, there are no holos or images of her at that age, except maybe a mugshot buried somewhere in an Imperial database. Did she look that young when she was with Saw? So many nights she fell asleep with her eyes squeezed shut tight, desperately wishing to wake up older, taller, stronger…

And then things changed and for years, she felt like she’d lived too long, seen too much. She was just waiting: to be caught, for the end, for her luck to run out. She was surviving, but not living.

Something else she has in common with Cassian.

But still, they survived—and now she has life and hope again when she thought survival was all she’d ever have.

Jyn leans her head against Cassian’s arm for a moment and feels his lips brush soft across the top of her head before she goes back to sorting through documents. (But first, she folds the paper back into its creases and sticks it in her pocket. Cassian pretends not to see.)


	31. T, Cassian/Jyn, big spoon little spoon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **literatiruinedme** prompted me with “Cassian as the little spoon.”

“You’re hurt,” Jyn mutters out of the corner of her mouth. She shifts in front of him, angling herself in a way that’s designed to make the flow of bodies on the moving walkway deflect away from him.

Cassian shakes his head, but even that small movement makes him a liar by its stiffness. He clips his response short to give as little away as possible. “Not bad.” And not here. He can’t afford to slow them down, even if his spine feels like molten durasteel has been injected into it, burning pain trickling down his nerves.

_Not that bad_ , he repeats to himself. It was just a rough landing, not even a fall or a blow. If it was bad, he’d have passed out when he hit the ground. Instead, he’s still able to walk with only a slight hint of the agony in his back coming through in his stride, making it a little stiffer than usual. It makes him look nervous, but that’s okay; in this city, everyone looks nervous.

Jyn grunts skeptically and plants herself more firmly in front of his weakened left side. She may be small, but she’s rooted strongly enough to divert people around her. The expression on her face is probably scaring them away too.

Cassian grits his teeth, and takes a deep breath through his nose, and holds on. He keeps moving because if he stops, he’s not sure he’ll be able to start again without an audible groan of pain. One burning step at a time, like walking on coals, one lead-heavy foot in front of the other, until they get back to the ship.

Once on the nondescript freighter, just big enough for two crew and one navdroid (which is unfortunately not Kay), at least he can sit down. He’s able to remain upright long enough to get them offplanet and into a hyperspace lane. Then it’s a matter of preparing himself, steeling for the pain when he stands up. Because that _will_ hurt—much worse, probably, given the time he’s had to stiffen up.

Before he can do it, though, Jyn levers herself out of the copilot’s seat and rests her hand lightly on his shoulder. His indrawn hiss of breath can’t be hidden. She slides her palm down his back, barely touching him, but he can feel the warmth along his spine even through his shirt. “Where does it hurt?”

“Everywhere,” he answers, beaten down into honesty for once. Her hand presses harder on a knotty chunk of muscle and scar and he almost cries out.

“Berth.” Jyn’s voice makes it an order. He fumbles to think of a reason she’d accept as to why he shouldn’t obey, but he can’t.

She anticipates him anyway. “Auto-pilot will manage just fine for a while. Come on.” He leans heavily on her for ten slow and lurching steps to the single crew berth, and with her help manages to lie down on it without bending at more than a ninety degree angle.

He ends up facing the bulkhead, scratched and dented and looking as flat and pathetic as he feels. Jyn’s hand slips away from his arm and he clutches at it with an unthinking spasm.

“I’ll be right back, I’m just getting a painkiller.”

“Nothing too strong,” he mutters, even though he trusts her.

“I know,” she answers, half-exasperated, but the tinge of fondness in her voice soothes him. If anyone understands his loathing of being sedated, it’s Jyn.

He doesn’t move in the few seconds it takes her to find the medkit and grab a hypospray. He just breathes, trying to focus through the stabbing pain of each inhale until Jyn returns. “Just an analgesic. Nothing that will put you out.” She pulls up his shirt and presses the plunger to the small of his back. It releases the drug with a soft hiss. Cassian holds back a yelp at the sensation of cold permeating the tissue.

Her weight settles on the mattress behind him and she fits her body delicately around him, knees curving behind his, her forehead pressed between his shoulders. She slings an arm around his waist and he grabs her hand, pulling it up to cradle against his chest.

The pain hasn’t lessened, but the hypospray is beginning to take effect and although it’s still there, it’s more distant now: like watching an explosion through transparisteel, or touching a blade wrapped in a thick blanket. Jyn slips her other hand beneath his shirt and rests her palm, warm and rough, against the cold spot at the small of his back. He can let go now, knowing that she’s here, safe and unhurt, between him and any possible attack.

Cassian closes his eyes, but he won’t sleep—can’t until they’ve rendezvoused with the fleet. Their mission report should go to Leia as well as Draven, she’ll want to know about the Alderaanian cell in the city they just left. He can still smell the acrid odor of the smokebombs Jyn set off to cover their retreat; it’s caught in his clothes. Every time he looked at Jyn on this mission, he had to suppress a doubletake at the sight of her eyes, turned pale blue by iris-disguising lenses. On Yavin 4 there were little blue flowers, weeds, that grew around the base of the pyramids…

He jerks, catching himself on the edge of dozing off. How long has he been wandering? “I should get up,” he mumbles. The navdroid on this ship is eager, and capable enough, but it’s no Kay.

“No.” Jyn slips a foot between his legs and curls it around his shin. “You should rest here until it’s time to re-enter atmosphere. I’ll pin you down if I have to.”

Even in Cassian’s blurrily floating mind, that concept rouses some very interesting images. “Is that a promise?”

He can feel Jyn’s cheek move as she smiles against his back. “Mmm, definitely. But later. Once you’re off the injured list.”

He sighs, letting himself bask in the luxury of Jyn curled snug around him, and bargains with her. “I’ll rest if you do.”

“Blackmail, Captain?”

“Just taking advantage of the opportunity. And encouraging you to do the same.” His voice scrapes in his raw throat, where he can still taste the smoke.

She lifts her head and presses a soft kiss to the base of his neck. For a second, the pain is eclipsed by the touch of her lips. “Then I’ll stay.”

He squeezes her hand and manages to bend his head just enough to kiss her knuckles.


	32. T, Cassian/Jyn, surprise pregnancy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for **AstridMyrna** to the prompt “Jyn finds out she’s pregnant but can’t tell Cassian for reasons.”

**harder to bear**

_Between hope and despair_  
_choose hope:_  
_it will be harder to bear._

 

There’s nothing Jyn can do about this utter fucking disaster right now. That’s all that keeps her from screaming uselessly at the medroid or smashing her knuckles against the duracrete wall of the clinic. She just nods, silently, and makes sure to give the droid her backup set of scandocs. She can’t have this information associated with any ID that the Rebellion knows about.

The word keeps bouncing around inside her head as she walks back to her shuttle. Pregnant. _You are preg-nant, gentlebeing_. In the weird, warbling tone of the dented medroid, it sounded more like “preg-not.” Jyn chokes down a hysterical laugh—how much she’d give for that to be the answer instead. The droid could barely speak Basic, obviously hadn’t been updated in years; she could lie to herself and say it was malfunctioning. But a basic pregnancy test is one of the simplest procedures there is: all it takes is a little piss or saliva and a hormone scanner. Jyn could have done it herself on-board, if she wanted to risk having the results seen by anyone else. Which she absolutely did not.

She almost wished Kay were here. At least he’d be able to give her a breakdown of all the percentages: how kriffing improbable this was, statistically speaking, so she’d know exactly how fucking unlucky she was. How good the chances of Cassian leaving over this were. 

Someone bumps her elbow and Jyn’s face automatically gathers into a snarl before she registers that it’s only a hurrying civilian, no threat. The Tefaun apologizes in a garbled rush and pushes past her, chasing a smaller version of itself. Jyn watches it scoop the young one up in its arms with a happy shriek. Could that be her one day...? 

No. Because there’s no way to keep a child safe in Jyn’s world. 

She can almost understand why her parents chose to have her, or why Cassian’s parents started a family. They weren’t soldiers, and a couple of decades ago the galaxy seemed more settled; just the normal, everyday risks threatening a child as it grew. No-one had expected war to erupt, or to fester into this slow-moving civil insurrection.

If Jyn were a parent, how could she justify being a Rebel? The logical thing to do would be to build a sterile new identity and keep her head down again. Resign herself to ignoring the crushing weight of the Empire. Although neither her parents nor Cassian’s had made that choice… and look where it had gotten them. 

Plus, Jyn doesn’t care about babies. She’s never understood why so many people coo over infants; to her, they’re basically just big grubs, eating and shitting and growing. But a treacherous part of her is already picturing a long-limbed child with Cassian’s dark eyes and rare, blinding smile. Her head swims with unshed tears that she blames on the fucking pregnancy hormones.

Jyn squeezes her hands into fists and swallows the sour bile rising in her throat. The anti-emetic the droid had dispensed for her isn’t working, or maybe she’s just too stressed. She needs to get back to her ship and get out of here. She needs to find Cassian.

The thought of telling him wrings her stomach with another wave of anxious nausea. But it’s not fair to conceal this from him; and if he ever found out that she’d done so… she shudders at the thought of shattering his trust. What will he say? Jyn doesn’t even know what _she_ wants, only what the smartest thing to do would be. What if their wants end up clashing irrevocably, in a way that can’t be resolved? And no matter what choice she made, she might be risking the most precious thing in her life: Cassian.

Jyn had thought her days of having to choose the least horrible option were over. She should’ve known better.

 

But when she docks on _Home One_ , Cassian has already left. 

She knew he was due to ship out soon, but she’d hoped for an overlap of a few hours—five minutes, even, just long enough to talk to him. Instead he’s gone, on an undercover mission where he can’t freely communicate with the Alliance. Periodic scripted check-ins are all that will be possible for the next four weeks. It wouldn’t have been her choice to tell him in a message, but if it were the only way, she would have. Now she can’t even do that. 

What is she going to do? She can’t make a decision without talking to Cassian first. Jyn feels paralyzed, caught in some kind of horrific limbo. But she can’t wait forever; at some point, she has to make a conscious choice about what to do. If she delays too long, the choice will be made for her.

So she counts the days, and hours, and tries to cling to the hope that Cassian won’t be gone for too long. She stays away from the ship’s medbay, visiting planetside clinics when she can get to one with her fake ID. She’s fortunate enough to be young and strong, and healthy; at least, they tell her it’s normal to be mildly nauseated and weighted down by fatigue so heavy it’s like pushing through double gravity all the time.

It doesn’t help that she just wants Cassian here, beside her. Her body misses him, and the raw ache in her heart (whether she puts it down to hormones or not) is a distraction every day. 

She’s constantly nervous. It’s not just the urge to run, though that’s part of it: but if she stays on _Home One_ for long enough, people will notice. And one of them will ask her what’s going on and then she’ll have to lie, or else tell someone before Cassian and that’s just not right.

It ends up happening anyway, because of course with her luck, one night Chirrut offers her a serving of Baze’s eel noodles. She used to love them, but now the smell alone is enough to make her stomach roil and the back of her neck go clammy with sweat. If she tried to put one in her mouth it wouldn’t stay down for long.

Chirrut sets the bowl down, but tips his head in her direction with a curious look on his face. “Are you well, Jyn?” 

She should snap at him, tell him she’s just not hungry. She should run away. Instead she freezes in place and bursts into tears.

Baze springs into action, urging her to sit on their cot while Chirrut sits beside her and takes her hands in his. “What is it, little sister?” 

Jyn only cries harder, gasping for breath. She can’t hold anything back now that the dam is broken. The two Guardians sit with her until the storm of tears passes at last and she hears herself saying in a tiny voice, “Can you keep a secret? From everyone?”

“You know we can,” is Baze’s answer, while Chirrut swears by the Force. 

Jyn barely waits for their reassurance before blurting out the news. Part of her has desperately wanted to tell someone since the moment she found out. The relief of saying the words aloud feels like a pressure valve released. She’s finally able to straighten her back and let out a deep breath, blink away the tears. 

And the expressions on both their faces are, to put it mildly, hilarious. They look like she just announced she was going to grow gills and live on Mon Cala.

“I don’t understand,” Baze says finally. 

Chirrut grins. “Well, Baze, the human species reproduces sexually, which means that one of Jyn’s eggs—” 

Jyn laughs and snorts at the same time, choking inelegantly on tears and snot. Baze smacks Chirrut gently on the arm, the motion turning into a caress. “You know what I mean, old fool. Both Jyn and the captain are very cautious people.” 

It’s the least important part of this, and yet Jyn is still a little embarrassed there’s no doubt in their minds who the other parent in this scenario is, even though she and Cassian have tried to be discreet.

“Paranoid, you mean,” Jyn says. “And yeah, we were both covered. But Cassian had to take a round of antiviral medication before this mission on Falleen. The medic told him it could interfere with contraceptive implants in human males. So he didn’t want to…” She buries her face in her hands. “And I was the one who told him to quit being so uptight. I just had mine replaced, it’s brand new, I said, it’s fine.”

Chirrut sucks in a breath between his teeth. “I presume it wasn't.”

“Yeah.” Jyn sits back up and slumps against the bulkhead, staring down at her belly. It’s rounded from this angle, but no more than usual: all the changes going on inside her are still invisible. “I looked into it and found out the last batch of implants was recalled because some of them were defective. Guess which kind I got. What are the odds?”

“I’m sure Kay could tell us,” Baze rumbles. Jyn starts to laugh again and can’t stop, hiccuping and sobbing at once until Baze puts one arm around her and squeezes her shoulders. “It will be okay, little sister.”

“All is as the Force wills—” 

“Don’t tell her that,” Baze growls, and Jyn has to agree with him. She’s sure the Force had nothing to do with this clusterfuck.

Chirrut sighs. “What I meant to say is that none of us knows the future, Jyn. Don’t make things worse for yourself by anticipating it. There will be time. Just try to have patience, and wait for Cassian.” 

Jyn takes another deep breath, and wipes her face, and nods. She can do this. She’s strong enough to hang on for as long as needed.

 

And then the universe decides to give another sample of her spectacularly shitty luck. On a simple courier mission, an asteroid fragment chooses the exact wrong millisecond to cross the trajectory of her ship. 

It doesn’t destroy the ship outright, only takes out the engine and cripples it. Now she’s trapped inside a disabled hunk of metal spinning through a lonely area of space with few hyperlanes through which she could expect anyone to pass. Blood trickles into her eyes, her head is swimming and she can barely stay upright in the pilot’s seat. The scanners are glitching, readouts flickering and dying, and she can’t tell whether the emergency beacon is still functional. But she smacks the button, and hopes.

An undetermined period of time passes as Jyn clutches the crystal at her throat and tries to stay calm. The worst that can happen is she’ll just… fall asleep and not wake up. It won’t hurt. 

She hears Saw’s gravelly voice telling her _Don’t fall behind, child_. She sees her father in front of her as she did on Jedha, his blue form cold and ghostly. _The pain of that loss is so overwhelming..._ She feels her mother’s arms around her and a whisper in her ear, _Trust in the Force_. _Yeah, well, the Force didn’t get me pregnant, mama_ , she thinks bitterly. 

She wanders through terrible dreams in which she knows she has a child but it’s already dead; or she loses the baby, a small bundle torn out of her arms by amorphous shapes. Its thin, wailing cries haunt her, blending into the whining alarms of the ship until she can't tell them apart. 

 

When she wakes, Cassian is at her bedside. All she can think is that she needs to touch him, to know that he’s real. She struggles to a seated position, pushing up on her hands and grabbing for him as he reaches for her. His hands cup her shoulders, her cheeks, holding her where he can look at her, his eyes devouring her face. Tears start leaking from her eyes and she can’t stop them from coming no matter how hard she sniffles. 

“I’m pregnant,” she says defiantly, her voice cracking. She waits for his face to change, for shock or dismay to sweep over it, but instead he closes his eyes in what looks like relief. 

“I know.” 

Jyn jerks backward in surprise but Cassian wraps her in his arms, so tight she can barely breathe for a second before easing off. “How? How could you possibly know?” she sniffles into his shoulder. She’s going to _kill_ Chirrut if he broke his promise. “And please ignore the crying. It’s the hormones, I can’t help it and it’s very annoying.”

He presses a kiss to the top of her head. “It was pretty hectic in here when you were brought in, and the medics—well, they tried to be discreet, but it wasn’t hard to figure out what they were worried about.” 

Of course. Jyn should’ve realized that Cassian would put two and two together. She lets herself melt into a boneless slump against him, turning her head to lay her cheek on his chest. She draws what feels like the first real breath she’s been able to take since she heard the news in that seedy clinic, inhaling his scent.

Cassian strokes his hand through her hair, fingers catching in the tangles of her wrecked bun. “Are you—I mean, is everything okay?”

“Yeah.” She nods, her chin rubbing his shirt. “I thought I had some kind of flu, so I went to get checked out. When the medroid told me, I couldn’t believe it. I almost passed out. Or ripped the thing apart, it was a close call.”

She feels Cassian take a deep breath. “What are you going to do?” His voice is so carefully even and soft that she can’t read anything in it. 

There it is, the billion-credit question. “I don’t know,” she whispers into the coarse weave of his shirt. “It doesn’t make sense right now. But I feel like this kid has already beaten the odds.... maybe it deserves a chance.” Tears trickle from her eyes again. “And then I think about everything that could go wrong. I don’t know how we could be parents, Cassian. I shouldn’t even be considering it.”

He rocks back and forth, just a little, the motion soothing. “For once, don’t think about what you _ought_ to do. What do you want?”

“I don’t know!” Jyn pushes out of the shelter of his arms and sits up, suddenly angry at his caution. Why won’t he give her any hint of what he’s feeling? She throws her hands up in an arc of frustration. “I never even thought about this before, but now it’s inescapable. And the whole point is that it’s not just about what I want. I need to know what you want too. Because whatever happens, I definitely don’t want to do this alone.”

“It’s not a good time, but there will never be a perfect one. If you want to, we could make it work.” He swallows. “Think of it as another reason to hope.” 

Jyn has come to want this child in the instinctive, unreasoning way she wants Cassian—because it’s _hers_ and dammit, she’ll protect it until her last breath. The thought of hope hadn’t really entered her head.

But if their child can be another reason for Cassian to find hope, something else to live for… 

“You talked me into hoping once before, and it worked out okay.” She tries to speak clearly through her aching throat. "If you're with me, I'm in."

"I'm with you, I promise." 

Cassian covers her face with kisses, and despite her dry mouth and her pounding head, Jyn is suddenly willing to believe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! This really should've been twice as long, but to post it in a reasonable amount of time I had to write most of it as a précis. Maybe some day I'll revisit it and add another 2500 words.
> 
> The title & epigraph come from Boris Novak's poem ["Decisions"](https://incognitajones.tumblr.com/post/184807778633/decisions), which I encountered at the perfect moment for this piece.


	33. G, Cassian/Jyn, losing your voice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **TinCan Telephone** asked: _I am always interested in rebelcaptain hurt/comfort! Or shameless fluff :P Or both!_  
>  _…how about cassian losing his voice?_

Cassian! Cassian, _say_ something—”

He can’t. His throat and eyes are scorched and painful: too long inside their downed ship, bathed in sharp caustic fumes from burning circuits and gases humans aren’t meant to inhale. He rolls over, gasping for breath, and buries his face in the sleeve of his jacket to smother the streaming tears and the cough tearing out of his chest.

Once that spasm is past, he opens his mouth and tries to speak, he really does, but all that comes out is another long, hacking cough, trailing off into a bloody glob of mucus that he spits onto the grass. At least he can drag a trickle of air into his seared lungs now.

Jyn sighs in relief. “Come on, up. I don’t want to drag you the whole way.”

She helps haul him to his feet and slings his left arm over her shoulders. Together they stagger away from the burning ship over ground that’s perfectly even but feels like a rolling sea. Once they reach a safe distance, they stop and collapse to the ground. It’s pure relief to breathe in something other than the bitter tang of smouldering metal. But the rawness at the back of his throat doesn’t go away. At first it’s just a slight scratchiness; then it swells into an itch, a cough, a pain throbbing with each breath.

“I want off this fucking planet,” he says, or tries to, but it only comes out as a raspy, unintelligible whisper.

Jyn glares at him. “Stop trying to talk.” She throws her canteen to him and he drinks, feeling the blessed coolness trickle over his parched lips and scorched throat.

 

“Smoke inhalation and laryngitis,” the medic says, irritatingly blasé. “A couple of shots from a bacta inhaler will take care of the alveolar damage to your lungs, but you did a number on your vocal cords too, and those take longer to heal. You won’t be able to speak at all for another two or three days, probably, and you should rest your voice for at least another week.”

“That won’t be hard for him,” Jyn says dryly.

Cassian scowls at her.

“No caf or alcohol either. Clear liquids only.”

Even better. Cassian buries his head in his hands.

 

Cassian agrees with Jyn; he wouldn’t have expected it to be difficult to stay silent for a couple of days either. He’s always thought of himself as a person of few words. Draven’s satisfied with getting his mission debrief in written format, and most of Cassian’s normal work can also be handled just as easily via terse messages sent over the base network as in person. The medbay even issued him one of the hand-sized tablets that are standard issue for species who don’t hear or speak at the most common audio frequencies. It’s easier to tap out brief messages on its large screen than write text messages on his comm.

But it’s isolating. Somehow not being able to say anything makes him feel left out among the loud chatter in the mess, now that he can’t even contribute a short assent or tell Antilles that he’s full of shit. When Cassian laughs at one of the insults Leia tosses at Solo, it snags in his throat and turns into a coughing fit.

And even if he tried to get something out, the soft whispery growl that’s all he can manage wouldn’t be heard through the din of the high-ceilinged, crowded room.

 

The next night he stays in his quarters. He’s aware that he’s sulking, and doesn’t care. He can’t lie down, because that will make his cough come back, so he leans against the icy wall with a parka crammed behind his back for cushioning and tries to focus on this report on Imperial droid manufacturing capacity.

But Jyn shows up just after 2100 hours, barely pausing to tap on his door before letting herself in.

“What’s up, Captain? You’re even quieter than usual today,” she jokes, and he rolls his eyes before turning away. He’s not in the mood.

She sits on the edge of his cot and touches his shoulder lightly. “Don’t be grumpy. I brought you some tea from Baze. He says it’s bitter, but good for sore throats.”

Cassian accepts this as the peace offering she probably meant. He mouths a thank you and puts down his datapad to take the insulated mug from her, sipping at the tea dubiously. Baze is right, it’s not what he’d call palatable, but it does seem to soothe his scratchy throat.

Jyn takes his other hand, idly tracing her fingertips over his palm in a way that makes the hair on his arm rise. He grits his teeth and holds still under her tantalizingly featherlight touch. Then he realizes she’s drawing letters on his hand, writing something… S L E E P.

He raises an eyebrow at her. She just smiles, her green eyes limpid in the low light from his datapad.

It couldn’t hurt to close his eyes for a moment, they’re slipping shut anyway. Just a second.

 

Jyn takes the cup out of Cassian’s drooping hand before it spills. She tucks her scarf around his neck and shoulder for a little extra warmth, and if her hand lingers on his cheek, well, there’s no-one here to tell.


	34. T, Cassian & Jyn, canonverse AU (meeting pre-Wobani)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A couple of short follow-ups to [Chapter 10](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17276666/chapters/40801025), an AU ficlet in which Cassian finds Jyn before she ends up in Wobani.
> 
> [edited on September 27, 2019 to add a short ficlet I'd forgotten about]

Cassian isn’t about to trust this woman at his back. That would be a gilt-edged invitation for her to put a hole through it with the tiny concealed blaster she still has. So he gestures respectfully for her to precede him. She isn’t impressed by politeness, apparently; the contempt in her glare would peel the electroplated finish off K-2’s chassis. She doesn’t argue, though, just slips ahead of him, pausing for a cautious check around the corner into the next alley before turning down it.

He follows at a calculated distance, giving her ample room, but she still glances warily back over her shoulder. “Where am I going?”

“Head for the spaceport. Pad Shen-Delta 22.”

She moves smoothly ahead of him and he uses the opportunity to study her further. She’s small—he can see right over the top of her head. Skinny, too, even under three or four loose, grubby shirts and vests; scrawny is the most apt word he can think of. She looks like he could snap her in two, and Cassian might take that bet if it weren’t for the fact that he’s not foolish enough to bet on anything, and also, he’s just watched her take out four Imperials in less than five minutes.

She keeps a swift but steady pace, staying close to buildings and angling her body away from him, making herself as small a target as possible. Her survival instincts are deeply ingrained; he can see the stiff unease in her shoulders at the sensation of someone following her.

This one’ll be a tough nut to crack. He has a healthy amount of respect for Draven and Mothma’s tactical abilities, both separately and together—any plan they can manage to agree on is usually a good one—but frankly, he doubts this Jyn Erso will even bother to hear them out. He’s seen her type before, in a thousand dingy cantinas settling a thousand small-time scores. She’s only here because he cornered her in a moment of desperation and because he has something she needs: a way off this planet. 

They enter the port through the busiest gate, her choice but one he approves of. She slows marginally as he speeds up a fraction and suddenly their steps fall into sync; they’re clearly a pair of companions instead of two strangers. Her shoulder even brushes his bicep as they pass through, Cassian flashing his pass at the guard in a lazy one-handed gesture.

As soon as they turn down the row marked Shen-Delta, the space between them opens up again. He reaches out with a light touch to her elbow and she spins, planting her feet firm and bringing her arm up to strike his away. 

“Sorry.” He holds up both hands in placation, smiling at her as pleasantly as he can. “I just wanted to warn you, my co-pilot is a little odd, but he’s reliable. Please don’t shoot him.”

She really doesn’t like it when he smiles, if the cold, closed-off expression on her face is any indication. The hatch clicks, slowly rising behind her, and she reaches up for a hand-hold to pull herself aboard before it’s even halfway open. “I don’t care if your co-pilot is Grand Moff Tarkin. Let’s just get off this ball of dirt.”

Cassian needs a moment to take a breath and collect his patience before he follows her. Jyn Erso is the embodiment of the phrase “playing with fire,” and before this op is over, he’s pretty sure his fingers are going to end up singed.

* * *

Jyn has a fair amount of time to think while she makes her way to the spaceport, feeling the intent gaze of her captor (he might not have put binders on her, but that’s what he is) on the back of her head.

Who is he? She glances back once to see whether she can glean any clues from his clothes or equipment. But it’s all aggressively nondescript: decent quality, well-used, a lot of it worn or mended, nothing distinctive in the slightest. The trace of accent she’d heard in his voice was the most notable thing about him, but an Outer Rim accent is far from uncommon in these parts of the galaxy.

A bounty hunter? She doesn’t think so. Too clean, and they’re rarely this professional; a bounty hunter would have felt her up under the pretext of searching her for weapons. Wouldn’t have bothered to tell her anything, either, just waved his blaster at her.

A smuggler, probably, who heard the name Liana Hallick (and once Jyn finds out who dropped it on this planet, she’ll see that they stop talking so loud) and wants an introduction to someone. Maybe her previous boss? Kilpack was a pretty big name in the Tingel Arm. Unfortunately, Jyn hadn’t left that gang on very pleasant terms, so a reference from her won’t do this smooth talker any good. He’ll be disillusioned soon enough.

As long as it comes after he gets her off this rock. She slows her pace to go through the spaceport gate with him and follows his directions to the right pad.

His warning before they board the ship catches her off-guard. What kind of co-pilot can he have that’s so bizarre he expects the sight of them to throw her for a loop? A Wookiiee, or something even stranger? She doesn’t care as long as they’re prepping for immediate takeoff.

She can see a blocky durasteel cranium over the top of the co-pilot’s seat. Big deal, it’s a droid. Then it turns toward them and her heart rate jumps up into the stratosphere at the unmistakable sight of a KX series Imperial enforcer. Her hand twitches in a reflex grab for a weapon that’s not there and she barely manages to camouflage the movement as tucking her thumb in her belt. What the hell is a smuggler doing with one of these things—

“You’re late, Cassian,” it says in a weirdly modulated voice. Whatever it is, it’s been heavily modified. “Is this the asset?”

Jyn snorts, wishing she still had a blaster capable of teaching this thing better manners. She’s no-one’s asset.

“Yes. Kay, meet Jyn Erso.”

Shit. Karking shitty clusterfucking hell—she turns and slaps the hatch release button, ready to jump out of the ship no matter how high off the ground it already is. It doesn’t work, of course. Her luck has run out and she’s finally been caught by someone smart enough to know what they’re doing.

She grinds her teeth and sucks in a deep breath through them, struggling for calm. “I hope parasites chew through your balls,” she mutters in Rodian under her breath. 

Cassian—at least now she has a name, assuming it’s not just an alias—gives her that fake, too-charming smile again. “Sorry, I’ve had all my shots.” 

She wants to demand how he found her, how he knows who she is (what she did to give herself away), but the most important question searing through her brain this instant is “What the fuck do you want?”

“You used to be close to Saw Gerrera.”

If he knows that too—not something that was ever attached to the name Jyn Erso—he knows far more about her than almost anyone else left alive. This is getting worse and worse.

She forces down the raw hurt that seeps through the cracks in her heart at the thought of Saw. “ _Used_ to be is the operative phrase there.”

“Still, he’d talk to you if you asked for a meeting. Wouldn’t he?”

It all clicks together in Jyn’s head like a truncheon snapping out to its full extension—the carefully nondescript appearance, the repurposed droid, the interest in Saw. This cocky bastard is a spy for the Alliance, or whatever those self-righteous fools are calling themselves these days. And they’re not going to let her go until they get what they want.

She’s trapped.

* * *

“Erso.” Andor raps his knuckles on the metal frame of her bunk. “Preliminary mission briefing starts in five.”

Jyn opens one eye and yawns, dedicated to the pretense that she hadn’t heard him enter the barracks. “I’m skipping it.”

“You never know, we might learn something useful.” He quirks an eyebrow at her, his dark eyes much too warm and friendly for someone half the Rebel base whispers is some kind of spec ops assassin (Jyn’s been listening to all the gossip she can catch in an effort to figure the man out).

His constant use of the first person plural in an effort to create some kind of nonexistent team bond with her is impressive. And the way he keeps smiling pleasantly at her is really starting to get on her nerves. He’s a much better actor than she is—although since he’s a spy, she supposes that’s to be expected. But Jyn knows just how irritating she can be; sooner or later, she’ll get under his skin.

Jyn clenches her jaw without letting the tension in her muscles show. The Rebellion thinks they own her, and they’re right—for now—but it grates on her to let them have the upper hand so easily. She’ll drag her feet as much as she possibly can, and enjoy making them carry her.

She sits up slowly and stretches, takes her time pulling on her jacket and shoes, making Andor wait just for spite. His polite expression never falters. “You know, I’m not used to working with a partner either,” he says. “Most of my work has been recon or deep cover. Solo missions.”

Jyn’s been a solitary operator for the last decade, and that’s how she likes it. She lets him see her roll her eyes. “So we’re really kindred spirits.”

“No, but to work together we might actually have to be… honest. Trust each other. More or less.”

“Nice try.” She nods. “But trust goes both ways, and you’re asking a lot of me without any sign that you trust me in return.”

Andor stares at her for an uncomfortably long moment, his eyes measuring and judging. She glares back, wondering what he’s thinking but refusing to give ground. Finally he sighs and unsnaps the holster on his thigh, draws his side-arm and holds it out to her, grip first.

Jyn swallows and reaches out slowly to take it, her fingers brushing his. The Rebels relieved her of her small back-up gun as soon as she landed—this is the first weapon she’s had her hands on since. Surely this is some kind of test? She inspects the blaster suspiciously, ensuring the safety’s on first, but it’s functional and fully charged.

“Come on.” His voice is still infuriatingly calm and unruffled. “We’ll be late.”

She stows the piece at the small of her back and follows him out of the barracks, her head spinning with confusion.

* * *

[This last snippet is about as far as I got with this AU before realizing I didn’t want to rewrite canon, and re-envisioning it with a slightly different plot had been done many times before (and, uh, would be way too much work).]

“With all due respect, ma’am, I don’t audition.” Jyn’s tone makes an insolent provocation out of the blandly polite words; it’s a long-practiced skill she takes considerable pride in.

Mon Mothma doesn’t rise to the bait, however. Being disrespected must be so rare for her that she can enjoy the novelty rather than find it irritating. “This is a singular opportunity, Miss Erso. We have precisely one chance at the Death Star plans and you are essential to it. I will not let this good fortune be wasted due to an incompatible command team. Before you go anywhere near Eadu, you must demonstrate that you can work with Captain Andor.”


	35. T, Cassian x Jyn, marks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little "trick or treat" ficlet for **firefeufuego** \- a post-script to [you're all mine, say what they may](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14390766) from Cassian's POV.

No-one said anything about the mark on Cassian’s neck the next day—not that he’d expected them to; the Rebellion had more important things to think about than his sex life. It wasn’t obtrusive, either. Visible, sure, if he turned his head a certain way, but not all that noticeable beside the shadow of his beard.

People still noticed, of course. Kes smirked, Bodhi snickered (he should laugh, considering what the Skywalker boy’d done to him), but that was all. Kaytoo informed him that the average contusion took forty-five to fifty standard hours to fade. Draven pretended not to see it at all, since it wasn’t relevant to operational needs, and Mon Mothma always had a knowing glint in her eyes so it was impossible to tell if she’d observed anything. All more or less what he’d expected.

What surprised Cassian was how much he liked knowing it was there. He didn’t know how to make sense of that feeling, how to explain the unsettling sweetness of the minor ache on his neck. Strange that he felt more comfortable displaying the mark of her mouth on him than he would holding her hand in public (if he ever dared).

Cassian knew that Jyn wanted him, but not that she wanted to keep him. He’d been prepared to hold on to her for as long as he could, and then let go. And though it had hurt even more than he’d thought possible, he’d done that. But then she threw out his calculations; she came back, and she stayed. She claimed him. In the light of day, it still didn’t seem entirely real. Was it true?

He had to keep himself from reaching up to touch the place several times an hour, awakening the dormant soreness under his skin. Each time he did he remembered the way Jyn had pressed her teeth there and marked him, the possessive tone of her voice when she said “Mine.” She’d kissed the same spot again this morning with a greedy noise, the same noise she made when he got his mouth on her, her fingers tugging at his hair…

He shifted in his seat, covering the restless motion by adjusting the angle of the datapad on his lap. Cassian hadn’t belonged to anyone in a very long time—not since his family died. Yes, the cause he served was a bedrock-deep part of his identity, he would always belong with the Alliance, but that was impersonal: like being a vital component of a tool or a weapon. It wasn’t like knowing that you belonged with another person. He’d grown accustomed to being solitary, unattached.

And now he might be hers. It felt like certainty, almost, in a life where so little was or could be. If Jyn wanted to keep him…. Well, Cassian had learned not to bet against her when she wanted something.

He pressed a finger to the dully aching spot on his neck once more and let himself believe it.


End file.
